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It’s Been Quite a Pool Party, but the Days Grow Short

FOR three years rock ’n’ roll has had a great summer romance at McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn.

Instant I-was-there concerts in the big, empty pool basin by M.I.A., Blonde Redhead and TV on the Radio. Packed free shows on blazing Sunday afternoons. The thrift-store couture, the human mural of tattoos, piercings, sunburns and hair dye. Every other midriff drenched from a Pete Rose dive down the Slip ’N Slide.

Like every sweet summer fling, though, this one is destined to end. According to a city plan, McCarren, on the border between Williamsburg and Greenpoint, will soon quit its current state — a combination performance space, hula hoop and dodge-ball playground, alt-fashion catwalk and reclaimed ruin — and revert to its original purpose as a public swimming pool.

Built by Robert Moses in 1936 with money from the Works Progress Administration, the 50,000-square-foot pool fell into decrepit condition and was closed in 1984, its steep brick archway a gravestone to the fun once had there. Now, after two decades of political stalemate, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has pledged $50 million to its renovation. The plan is to go before the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission this month; if approved, shovels could be in the ground by spring, and the new pool could open in 2011. The last scheduled concert is Sonic Youth on Aug. 30.

“It was a good run,” said Emmy Tiderington, a 27-year-old Williamsburger with a tattoo snaking down her right shoulder. “Nothing lasts,” she added.

From SummerStage in Central Park to Celebrate Brooklyn! in Prospect Park, New York has no shortage of prime outdoor concert spaces. But none have had McCarren’s brief and brilliant life. More than 200,000 people are expected to ramble over its concrete shell this summer for concerts, film screenings, plays and craft fairs, said Stephanie Thayer of the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn, which administers the pool in cooperation with the Parks Department. Ten thousand alone turn up for the free Sunday concerts by the promoter JellyNYC; the space holds 6,000, and many are turned away. The last free concert will be Yo La Tengo on Aug. 24.

Nowhere else does a quadruple-Olympic-size swimming pool fill with music usually heard in dark nightclubs where hula hoopers fear to tread. Nowhere else do water-sport squeals serve as auxiliary percussion. And for better or worse, no other stage has so definitively established itself as the preferred strolling grounds for the latest and most bizarre hipster plumage.

“This is the coolest place to people-watch,” said Bryan Murphy, 20, a University of Connecticut student who commutes to the pool on the 85-minute Metro North train from Bridgeport. “People in Brooklyn are different than people anywhere else. They just look different.”

And perhaps no other concert space so clearly illustrates the swift effects of gentrification. Just as bohemian culture in Greenpoint and Williamsburg is having its most visible, celebratory moment, it is being bulldozed out of the neighborhood. Rows of gleaming luxury condominiums have sprung up alongside the park, and the tattoo-and-skinny-jeans set is getting priced out.

That McCarren Pool will be filled with water again has pleased many longtime residents and activists. But at several recent concerts the prevailing opinion was: bummer.

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THE MCCARREN PARK POOL has hosted bands and stunts: above, the group Liars.Credit
Michael Nagle for The New York Times

“They let it rot for years and years, and now all of a sudden they’re like, ‘It’s viable to turn it into a pool again,’ ” said Liz Castaldo, a 23-year-old sporting yellow knee socks, a plaid miniskirt and AfterMidnight Blue hair. She lived in Williamsburg until the rent shot up, she said; now she lives in Bushwick.

Angus Andrew of the experimental rock band Liars, which played two Sundays ago, echoed the ambivalence of many concertgoers unhappy about losing McCarren as a full-scale performance space but aware that far worse things could happen to it.

“I think it’s actually a real shame if we lose that space for what it’s being used for,” Mr. Andrew said. “But at the same time, I’m as hot as anyone and I would love to jump in a pool.”

The fight for McCarren Pool has been going on for longer than much of the current crowd has been alive. After it closed, the pool was nearly demolished amid a bitter and racially charged community debate over its use. That debate still lingers. Phyllis Yampolsky, founder of the McCarren Park Conservancy and a Greenpoint resident since 1982, said that the pool belonged to a more diverse local population than the mostly white crowd that attends concerts there.

“The basic need of that pool is as a pool and recreation center for all the peoples of North Brooklyn, which includes a lot of black people and a lot of Latino people,” Ms. Yampolsky said. “Its basic needs are not for the fashionistas of Williamsburg.”

Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, said that the concerts and other events were never considered a permanent plan. “We always envisioned that these would be interim uses,” he said, “but we are delighted by what has happened there and want to find alternate venues.”

The design for the renovated pool calls for a slightly smaller swimming area and a space that could be used for off-season performances.

The Open Space Alliance is searching for a new concert area for next year, and has its eye on Bushwick Inlet Park, a planned 28-acre city park along the industrial waterfront of northern Williamsburg. But it’s far from a sure thing; among other issues, the results of environmental testing at the site are not available.

Perhaps just as discouraging, Ms. Thayer said, is that few of the young people at the McCarren concerts have attended community board meetings, thus depriving themselves of a voice in the political process. “They’re voting with their feet by coming to the concerts,” she said, adding, “During the planning process for Bushwick Inlet, they just didn’t participate.”

Photo

Credit
Michael Nagle for The New York Times

At one point during the Liars set, Mr. Andrew looked out over the crowd and tried a quick vote about the future of the pool.

“How many people would like water here?” he asked, and a smattering of hands went up near the stage. Then he offered the second option: “Some people want rock.” Again, mild response. But once the band started the strangled guitar chords of its next song, the place came alive with hoots and hollers, fists pumping and, in a sign of audience happiness found only at McCarren Pool, a raging dodge-ball game.

Next year JellyNYC’s “pool parties” will open in offbeat performance spaces in Austin, Tex.; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; and Nashville, said Alexander Kane, the company’s founder. Without a secure plan for a replacement site, though, they could easily disappear from New York.

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“All the soul from this neighborhood is going to be gone if these concerts and the films and everything else that happens at the pool is gone,” Mr. Kane said. “Then this neighborhood just turns into any other neighborhood that was settled by artists, and then the artists have to leave.”

Despite the political noise and the millions of pledged dollars, it took an artist to reopen the pool. Four years ago Noémie Lafrance, a Canadian-born choreographer who specializes in dance in unusual spaces — and who moved to Williamsburg in 1994 — got an idea for a performance at the crumbling and graffiti-covered pool and took matters into her own hands.

“I one day woke up and called the Parks Department and said I want to do a show there,” Ms. Lafrance said.

To her surprise, the Parks Department agreed. But to clean and prepare the space required a fee of $250,000. Ms. Lafrance raised $50,000, and the rest was paid by Live Nation, the giant concert promoter, which was eager to present ticketed (i.e., non-free) events. Ms. Lafrance’s piece, “Agora,” had its premiere by her company, Sens Production, in September 2005. JellyNYC, which got involved through Ms. Lafrance, put on the first concert at the reopened space on July 9, 2006, a free show with the Brooklyn band Les Savy Fav.

Then as now, the events had a playful, improvised appeal. The setting gives every concert a fresh context — O.K., you’ve seen the Yeah Yeah Yeahs before, but have you ever seen them in a place where people once swam the backstroke? — and musicians have often seemed energized by the novelty as well.

But even the free shows cost money. Mr. Kane said his budget for the season of nine shows is almost $750,000, raised largely through corporate sponsorships. As a result the pool parties are heavily branded. Advertising banners line the stage side of the pool, opposite the Scion display car and the little village of promotional booths for Topshop, a clothing store, where patrons get a branded plastic beach mat after sitting for a branded photo-booth session.

Photo

Credit
Max Ulrich/NYC Parks Photo Archive

Waiting on line at Topshop with two friends, Mr. Murphy, the Connecticut student, shrugged at all the advertising. He had already gone through the photo booth and gotten his mat. “I’m just keeping my friends company,” he said.

Regardless of whether a new space is found, the sun has started to go down on the McCarren concerts. Last year events ran well into September, but the concert season was cut short this summer to allow the scheduled construction to begin, Ms. Thayer said.

Remaining events include performances of the play “Twelve Ophelias” by the Woodshed Collective, open-air screenings of the films “28 Days Later” and “Rushmore,” and concerts by Wilco, the Black Keys, the Felice Brothers and Aesop Rock. The next free show is Sunday, with the Black Lips and Deerhunter.

Elena Gilbert, 22, a Bard College student whose summer plans include five pool shows, looked up briefly from what appeared to be prolific texting to note the one hope for the future of the pool events: bureaucratic delays.

“Hopefully it’ll be like the Mermaid Parade,” she said, “where they keep telling you it’s the last summer and it never is.”

Last Licks: McCarren Park Pool’s Summer Shows

McCarren Park Pool is on Lorimer Street, between Driggs Avenue and Bayard Street, in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; mccarrenpark.com. Here is the schedule of remaining performances:

Tickets (priced from $29.50 to $39.50) must be bought in advance; they are not available at the pool. They can be purchased through ticketmaster.com and in Manhattan at the Nokia Theater, 1515 Broadway, at 44th Street (for Wilco and Sonic Youth); the Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, Lower East Side (Black Keys); and the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at East 15th Street (Regina Spektor).

THE BLACK KEYS AND TAPES ’N TAPES (Thursday at 6:30 p.m.)

WILCO AND JENNIFER O’CONNOR (Aug. 13 at 5 p.m.)

REGINA SPEKTOR AND ALBERT HAMMOND JR. (Aug. 15 at 6 p.m.)

SONIC YOUTH (Aug. 30 at 4 p.m.)

Films

Screenings are free and begin at sunset. Take something to sit on.

‘28 DAYS LATER’ (2002), Tuesday.

‘BLUE VELVET’ (1986), Aug. 12.

‘VELVET GOLDMINE’ (1998), Aug. 19.

‘RUSHMORE’ (1998), Aug. 26.

Theater

‘TWELVE OPHELIAS’ A play by Caridad Svich about Ophelia’s coming back to life, presented by the Woodshed Collective; 8 p.m. (Friday, Monday, Wednesday and next Friday, and Aug. 11, 14, 16, and 20-22). Free tickets can be reserved through theatermania.com.

Correction: August 2, 2008

Schedule information on Friday with an article about the final summer concerts at McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn misstated a performer’s given name at one point. As noted elsewhere, she is Regina Spektor, not Rebecca.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page E1 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s Been Quite a Pool Party, but the Days Grow Short. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe